All that Remains
by soupkitchen
Summary: An aging recluse receives the most unlikely of inheritances following the Joker's execution, and comes to realize it's not who she let into her home many years ago that haunts her most - it's who she let out.
1. Visitations

**All that Remains**

**Author's Note:  
**This is the first fic I've written in several years, and my first Batman fic ever. If you read it and care to leave a review, constructive criticism shall be happily received.

The events of the story are meant to take place roughly four years after Dark Knight Rises, which puts it about twelve years after the events of Dark Knight. The events of TDK will be the real focus of the fic, so if I make any errors in respect to TDKR, I offer you and the Nolanverse my humble apologies.

Obligatory Disclaimer: If you recognize it from DC, Marvel, or anywhere else, than it isn't mine and I'm not making money from it. Hell, I'm not even making money off my own characters.

* * *

**Chapter One: Visitations**

Commissioner Gordon blew a heavy sigh through his nostrils, watching the twin jets of his exhalation steam briefly in the damp fall air. They had been standing outside the entrance of this rundown apartment building for almost ten minutes without a response, and the wait was beginning to get uncomfortable. Orwell Place was located in one of the sketchiest parts of the Narrows, and even in broad daylight, it just wasn't a decent place for two members of the Gotham Police to be seen standing still.

Tempting though it was to contact the landlord and be let in, Gordon had insisted that they be greeted by the tenant personally. It simply was not the kind of situation where a warrant was necessary. The exact opposite, in fact. They weren't here to investigate this particular tenant's apartment and take anything away – they were here to drop something off.

"Try it again," Gordon instructed to his companion.

The young constable gave his superior a dubious look, but nonetheless reached forward and insistently pressed one of the apartment's intercom buttons. The label next to it read: Suite 502, A. Morrison. It was a rare thing to see one of the labels actually filled with a name. Most apartment-dwellers in the Narrows preferred not to advertise their whereabouts.

Just as the constable released his finger from the button, a few raindrops pattered down from the sky. They flattened heavily on the concrete beneath the two men's feet, thick tiny puddles that began to grow rapidly in number. November was going to be an icy month if the precipitation continued to partner with the falling temperatures.

Gordon tightened his grip on the large rectangular box slung under his arm, having abandoned any attempt to keep the contents from shifting. Several cold, wet drops managed to fall down the neck of his wool coat and he was just about the open his mouth and suggest they try another day when a faint crackle finally croaked over the intercom. Amidst the static, a woman's hesitant voice could be heard.

"Yes?"

The young constable practically leapt for the button in response.

"Ms. Anne Morrison? This is Constable Merriman with Commissioner Gordon. We'd like to have a few words with you ma'am."

The low, soft static from the intercom told them both that the tenant was pressing the button to respond, but it took a full minute before they actually heard her voice. There was a certain tremor to it when she spoke, which could have easily been mistaken for fear if it weren't for the solidity of her words.

"Well, I know I haven't done anything wrong. But you boys can come right on up, if you insist."

The crackling cut out almost instantly, replaced by a harsh buzz as the door to Orwell Place apartments was finally unlocked. Gordon stepped inside as his companion held open the door, shaking a few raindrops from his hair. His glasses fogged momentarily, but the apartment's foyer was so poorly heated it didn't make much difference whether they were standing inside or back out on the steps.

"Number 502, right?" Gordon checked with Merriman.

"That's the one, sir. Do you want me to take the package?"

Gordon stiffened a little, pursing his lips as he instinctively held the box closer against his side. Even as he did so, there was something in his eyes that suggested he very much wanted to be rid of whatever was inside that innocuously blank white box.

"It's fine," the Commissioner huffed, taking a glance at the wrought-iron elevator against the far wall.

Merriman strode forward and pressed the up button. The elevator's pulley-system whirred to life, creaking and hissing like some kind of octogenarian beast, before spluttering unhelpfully while the doors remained resolutely shut. The elevator car shifted in the shaft by a few centimeters, as though the cables had only managed to jam themselves a short distance above.

Merriman bit his lip in frustration and nodded towards the stairs, "Might have to do it the old fashioned way, sir. Are you sure about that package?"

Suite 502 would not involve them climbing a ridiculous distance up the stairs, but still, Merriman was not wrong to offer his assistance. It was clear that the contents of the box weighed on the Commissioner more in an emotional sense than a physical one, but the past twelve years had left him seeming quite frail at times. From the recent shooting in the sewer that had almost finished him off, to the night he and his family were found with Harvey Dent's body in the decimated remains of a torched warehouse – there had been many contributions to the crease marks in Gordon's face and the gray in his hair.

Time itself was one of them. Gordon was almost near retirement now, well into his sixties despite the rigorous routine of exercises he maintained to keep himself youthfully fit. But even bones and muscle eventually refuse to cooperate, and there was a stiffness in one knee that even Constable Merriman, new to the job though he was, could see.

Gordon used his free arm to wave off the offer of assistance, giving his shoes a quick wipe on the mat at the bottom of the stairs before climbing them.

When they reached Suite 502, both men were sweating a little beneath their thick wool coats. The brief climb had proved sufficient enough to counter the chill of the poorly heated apartment.

Ms. Morrison was not waiting for them outside her apartment when they arrived, so Merriman rapped several times on her door. Before she opened it they could hear her unlocking not one, not two, but six different sets of locks.

The door creaked as it moved on its hinges, as though it was an alien action altogether, and Ms. Morrison's head appeared from behind it. This was followed by a pair of thin, slightly hunched shoulders, and then a torso drowning in a poorly-knitted gray sweater that looked about three sizes too big for a quarterback, let alone the diminutive frame of the woman wearing it. Her hair was scraggly and brown, but riddled with veins of silver, strongest at her left temple. A pen was perched behind her ear.

"Now then," she said, brown eyes flitting back and forth from Gordon, to Merriman, to the hallway. "What can I do for you two?"

Her arms were wrapped tight around her chest, hands hidden from view somewhere in the depths of that atrocious sweater. Coupled with the curl in her shoulders, Merriman thought she looked like a woman afraid of some unseen hand coming to give her a slap.

Gordon cleared his throat and brought the box from underneath his arm, holding it out to her with both hands. She eyed it nervously and then looked directly at him, imploring.

"Do you watch the news much, Ms. Morrison?" he asked.

"I get the paper every day," she replied, "But I don't bother much with the television. Got too expensive for me, and besides, there's nothing on anyway."

That was enough for Gordon. It sounded like something he might say, if asked the same question. He smiled gently at her, wondering how close she might be to his age.

"Well, if you've been keeping up with things recently, you may recall that last month one of Gotham's most dangerous criminals was sentenced to death by lethal injection."

The woman scowled. "Bloody stupid time to do it, honestly. Halloween? Bet he thought that was a gas."

Merriman's mouth opened in surprise – apparently there was more to her than first appeared. But just as Ms. Morrison caught sight of the constable, she seemed to shrink inwardly even more, her eyes widened and her lips pulled in, as though afraid of letting out any more words. It was as though her own outburst had surprised her too.

Gordon ignored her interjection and continued.

"Ms. Morrison, the criminal in question made up something equivalent to a last will and testament before the date of his execution. There wasn't a whole lot to it, but he was adamant that after he was gone, you should be given these," Gordon stretched his arms, trying very hard not to push the box in the woman's face, but also insisting that she take it. Slowly, a pair of long-fingered hands rose up from the sea of sweater and grasped the box.

"Now, we've gone over everything down at the lab to make sure that all of this is safe, and in the past two weeks, my men and women have been able to find nothing. So there's no reason you shouldn't be given these, as per his request."

Anne Morrison's knuckles were white as her fingers curled around the box's sides. Gordon's gentle, forever-fatherly smile was beginning the waver.

"That said, Ms. Morrison, you're the first person we've ever encountered who seemed to have some significance to this man. That he'd mention anyone at all in his will, let alone someone who... who has remained a law-abiding citizen of Gotham without any connection to his criminal activity, is frankly remarkable."

She was shrinking again. Merriman cleared his throat softly, a signal he hoped that would be unobtrusive, but still pointed. _C'mon, Commish, get on with it. We're losing her._

Gordon got the hint.

"And so, really, what we'd like to do is ask you a few questions about how you knew this man, and what he may have meant to you – possibly even what you may have meant to him."

Ms. Morrison swallowed, her eyebrows coming down heavily over her eyes. Overhead, a man could be heard yelling at a woman whose replies only came back in the form of screeching. Somewhere else in the apartment, a young child wailed. Further down the hall, the sounds of what could have been a violent action movie, or clips of the Gotham City News, came loudly from someone's television.

Merriman glanced over his shoulder uncomfortably, then back to the woman before them. The tension in the hallway was rising exponentially.

At length, Ms. Morrison found her voice and addressed the Commissioner with as strong a tone as she could muster.

"I appreciate very much that you gentlemen have come to me with this, but I confess I'm a little overwhelmed by everything at the moment. I've seen enough movies in my day to know that you don't want me leaving the city, and I can promise you that I won't, but I need some time, Commissioner. If I make my way down to the station a week from today to talk, will that be all right?"

It didn't take much convincing for either Gordon or Merriman to believe she would keep her word. It hardly seemed likely that Ms. Morrison would be leaving her apartment any time soon, let alone the city.

"That'll be fine, Ms. Morrison."

"Then I'll see you in a week," she turned, as though to escape back into her apartment without a backward glance, but stopped herself. She forced a half smile to her lips and lifted the box now officially in her possession. "Thanks for dropping this off."

The Commissioner returned her forced smile with one of his own, then turned to leave with Merriman behind him. He couldn't bring himself to deliver the customary "you're welcome". In truth, he felt more like thanking _her _for relieving him of the wretched thing.

* * *

The young constable's back had barely disappeared down the stairwell before Anne closed her apartment door and locked it. Once back in the privacy of her own home, she relaxed a little, setting the box on her kitchen counter and eyeing it suspiciously.

It was all fine and well for Commissioner Gordon to say that the contents were safe, but she wasn't so sure.

As though to give credence to her doubt, Anne turned her back on it, still unopened, and began to fix herself a pot of tea. Then she lit herself a cigarette, in clear defiance of Orwell Place's no-smoking policy, and took several long drags as she waited for the water to boil. A full twenty minutes had passed from the time that she took it from Gordon's hands before she actually opened it.

The first thing to strike her was that, even after an extended period of time in the lab, the clothes still smelled damnably of gunpowder and gasoline. Or maybe she just imagined that they did. It didn't really matter – the stench of violence was appropriate for the long purple coat, garishly patterned shirt, pinstriped pants, suit-jacket and vest. They had become visual symbols of terror for a period of time, why not a scented one too?

Aside from the clothes there was a pair of heavily scuffed brown shoes, a pair of patterned socks, a set of diamond-checkered suspenders, two tins of greasepaint (almost empty), and a tube of lipstick.

It was the lipstick that finally broke her. She'd been wondering where it had gone, twenty-some years ago. And now _he_ had brought it back to her.


	2. Antecedents

**All that Remains**

**Author's Note: **First of all, I should mention that I made some very slight changes to the first chapter, like including the pants and socks in the box, where initially they had been absent. Secondly, thanks to everyone who's dropped by and read, reviewed, or decided to follow this. I really appreciate it. Again, if you've got constructive criticism you'd care to give, I'd be happy to hear it.

And, as always, I do not own anything/anyone here related to DC, and even the characters that _are _mine, I'm not making money off of.

* * *

**Chapter Two: Antecedents**

The police cruiser bounced uncomfortably on its suspension as Constable Merriman drove over a particularly rough patch of asphalt. Defeated by the motion, Gordon finally lowered the manila file he had been trying to read ever since the two had left Orwell Place. The Commissioner gave the younger man an exasperated sidelong glance, but did not speak. It wasn't Merriman's fault, really. He used to be able to handle reading in a vehicle, but without the rush of adrenaline that accompanied a high speed chase or serious situation, lately it seemed like even simple things such as speed bumps and potholes could upset his stomach.

The distraction proved timely, however, and the Commissioner pointed his finger at a street just a few meters ahead.

"There," Gordon said to Merriman, "We're taking a detour. Turn left."

The young constable obliged his superior, grinning as he did so. The Commissioner rarely indulged in acts of spontaneity, even his personal life seemed to be governed by a strict sense of orderliness and careful calculation. Occasionally though, he would surprise the other members of the force and – seemingly – give in to impulse. The secret, as Merriman was coming to learn, was that these random acts were more often than not cases where Gordon had been thinking on the matter for some time, and then forgotten about it until the last minute.

Following Gordon's directions, Merriman found himself navigating the cruiser towards a dingy looking coffee-shop with upturned patio furniture. The metal chairs had been white originally, but the paint was peeling off to leave behind scars of rust. Over the door read a sign: _Bean There, Bun That Café_. It was an unusual jolt of humor in the Narrows. Or an attempt at humor, anyway.

Gordon shifted awkwardly in his chair to pull a ten dollar bill from his pocket. He handed it to Merriman and nodded towards the shop.

"Go on in and grab us something for the ride home. I don't know what you like, and I probably couldn't order it if it wasn't straight coffee, anyway. They've got all kinds of nice things in there, but I like just a cup of Joe and a cookie."

Taking the bill, Merriman rose out of the cruiser and stepped into the shop. As soon as the little bell jingled overhead, his nostrils were assaulted by a delicious aroma. There was cinnamon and steam, chocolate and dark-roasted Columbian blend beans, with an elusive hint of hazelnut lingering in the air. In here, surrounded by such smells, it was easy to forget the shop's location and the appalling statistics that came with it. After the attempted nuclear annihilation of the city over two years ago, and the subsequent denouncement of the Dent Act, Gotham had returned to its criminal nature, and nowhere more so than in the Narrows. Police departments responsible for this area also saw the highest level of turnover; the daily calls about domestic disputes, stabbings, rape, and child abuse were just too much after a while. Here, it felt like those things could be momentarily forgotten.

It occurred to Merriman that the Commissioner had managed to find a café that mirrored how he preferred his coffee – dark and bitter on the outside, but secretly sweet within.

The girl behind the counter watched the constable gawk at the interior of the shop for a moment before she cleared her throat to grab his attention. "What'll it be, officer?"

Merriman smiled and approached the counter, eyes fluttering up to the chalkboard menu. Gordon hadn't been kidding. For a small establishment, _Bean There, Bun That _had a selection that rivalled most commercial coffee shops. Feeling the barista's patience already waning, Merriman quickly ordered the first thing he recognized – a London fog –and a large coffee with sugar on the side.

"Do you have any cookies?" he asked, eyes rapidly scanning for the answer on the board. The barista smirked, reaching across the counter for the ten dollar bill hanging limply from Merriman's hand.

"We got chocolate chip, chocolate, white macadamia, oatmeal, peanut-butter, gingersnap – "

"Great," Merriman interrupted, "I'll take one of each. To go, please."

Seven minutes after he had left the cruiser, the young constable returned laden with two steaming beverages and a sizeable pile of cookies on a paper plate wrapped in cellophane.

Gordon looked up from the manila file that he had resumed reading after Merriman had vacated the cruiser. He eyed the plate of cookies with surprise, and a hint of anticipation. It had been a long time since the two pieces of toast he had scarfed down for breakfast.

Merriman pinched his cup between his knees as he buckled himself in and freed the plate of its wrapping. He grabbed an oatmeal cookie that was precariously balanced on the others and then took a generous bite out of it. As he chewed, words began to develop for a thought that had niggled at him ever since they left the apartment. Turning to face Gordon, he made to give voice to these words, almost spraying his superior with chewed cookie as he did so.

"D'you think it was a good idea, letting her make her own terms with us like that? I mean, we coulda just had her come with us down to the station today, and the whole thing would be over for everyone."

Gordon raised his eyebrows and tilted his head from side to side, as though weighing the pros and cons of the suggestion. He blew the steam off the top of his coffee and took a sip before answering.

"Son, what we told that poor woman was that – of all the people in Gotham – she was the one on the Joker's mind during his last days. I'd give _anyone _a week to mull things over after news like that."

The young constable wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist. "But, that's my point. Of all people, she was the one he left his stuff to. It's odd, isn't it? The clown used other people for his jobs, but he wasn't exactly close to any of them. Not enough to leave an inheritance to, anyway. I mean, there were some rumors a while back about that doctor from Arkham, but nothing ever came of it. So, how come this woman that nobody's ever heard of before?"

A large mouthful of coffee slid down Gordon's throat. The heat from the coffee was still strong enough to fog up his glasses slightly.

"Yes, and that's why we want to ask her a few questions. But she's not being 'questioned', officially. Odd as it all is, there's no doubt in my mind that Anne Morrison had nothing to do with the Joker's crimes. Did you see her face when we handed her the box? She was terrified, but not of us. That's not the way someone looks when they're guilty of something. Besides," Gordon held up the manila folder that had so intently held his interest, "according to this, she may well be one of the most ordinary women in all of Gotham."

* * *

Anne stared balefully at the golden tube that she'd clenched in her fist. It had been empty of any lipstick for a long time and was horribly scratched, but the engraved letters were visible even still. _A. M. _

The lipstick had been a gift from her great-aunt, a "womanly accessory" to celebrate her sixteenth trip 'round the sun. The tube itself had been fascinating to her, stylized and brilliant, but its content was awful. A garish crimson, it had smeared on her lips like grease, and in the mirror it looked to Anne as though she'd bitten into raw meat rather than applied cosmetics. She'd never worn it after that.

_He _had clearly found better use for it.

Absently, she shifted the lid off with her thumb, then clicked it back into place several times. Struck by a sudden thought, she set the tube down and pulled the white box onto her lap, carefully removing the shoes, clothes, and tins of greasepaint. As she lifted out each item, she examined it with precision, riffling through each pocket and opening to make sure it was empty. It was a long shot to assume that the police had missed something, but it still felt necessary to try.

No note. No explanation.

Anne sighed heavily, her shoulders slumping as her hands dropped to her lap, still holding one brown leather shoe. Her fingers stroked it, feeling the scuffed heel, the frays beginning to form on the laces. As she felt the shoe, her thumb brushed against something odd, and she lifted it to eye-level. There was a small slit at the front, an opening. Anne frowned and tilted it, peering inside. Even with the thick soles and lifted heel, the stiffness of the leather, the shoe was abnormally heavy. Heavier than its mate.

She placed the shoe on the floor and tentatively slipped her foot, pathetically small by comparison to the intended wearer's, inside. Her toes wriggled blindly within the dark depths of the shoe, and then they brushed against something. Biting her lip, Anne pressed down on the object with her big toe.

_Shhtik!_

A few scant centimeters beneath her foot, a blade sprang out of the opening she had noticed earlier. Anne gasped in surprise, jerking her leg and sending the oversized shoe flying across her small living room. It rolled and clattered to a stop on its side, the blade painfully obvious, like some awful James Bond weapon come to life.

The papers had said he was armed to the teeth, quite literally. She had believed that much. But a shoe-knife?

Anne bit her lip and unfolded her legs, bracing herself before she rose to pick up the shoe and return it to its mate. As she moved to put them back in the box, something occurred to her.

Aside from the vast arsenal of knives that the papers had reported, she currently had in her apartment almost every known personal possession of the Joker. What had they buried him in?

Surely not barefoot in his underwear?

"Oh, Joe..." Anne whispered, bringing her hand to her mouth as the full implication of last month's execution finally sank in. "What have you done to yourself?"

* * *

As Constable Merriman deftly wove the police cruiser through Gotham's infamous traffic, the Commissioner read aloud the file that he'd been compiling on Anne Morrison from the day her name crossed the Joker's lips. Even for Gordon's thorough and diligent research, the main file was only about three pages of text. The bulk of the paper was consumed by extraneous records and photographs.

"She was born into a stable family, an only child, in a suburban residence on the north side of the city. Parents stayed together until death – mother developed cancer and father passed away shortly after, apparently from grief. Ms. Morrison seemed to have a healthy relationship with them throughout. Graduated from one of the wealthier public schools with good grades, especially in English. After she graduated, she took some time to work and save money for further schooling. Got a job as a dealer in one of the casinos owned by the Falcone family, interestingly enough."

The police cruiser pulled up to a red light, and Merriman turned to face Gordon in surprise. "What? You mean she was representing the house while a bunch of mob bosses played blackjack around her table?"

Gordon finished his cookie in one last bite, covering his mouth as he struggled to chew through the chocolate chunks.

"Not exactly. A rather high number of businesses owned and operated by Gotham's favorite families are actually legitimate. They pay their taxes, send in all the right paperwork, apply for the necessary permits, and the police get to be satisfied with that. The only thing illegal about Ms. Morrison's position at the casino was that she was underage when they hired her. Happens a lot, actually. Not hard to believe judging by her graduation photo."

When they hit another red, Gordon held the photograph out to Merriman. The young woman staring up at him was a stark contrast to who they had just visited. Her brown eyes were bright, her face free of the lines that time had since placed there, and her hair was lush and curly. The eyebrows were aristocratic in their thickness, her lips pinkish, but thin. Not a beautiful woman, but handsome, and decidedly mature looking.

"But, she seemed to do well there for the few years that she stayed," Gordon continued, slipping the photograph back under a paperclip after Merriman returned it, "well enough to put herself through university while working, anyway. And, while she was getting her degree in English, she met a young man named Henry Winterburn. They got married, she quit her job, and they settled into a small house in the Narrows – no doubt all they could afford after they both were done with school."

Gordon paused to reach for another cookie and nibbled on it, swatting away at the crumbs that had fallen into his lap.

"That lasted about five years, and then they filed for divorce. There's actually a note somewhere here written by the lawyer who dealt with them: '_Quietest divorce I've ever handled. They came in, stated their intentions, agreed on terms, signed papers, and were done.'_ After that, she changed her name back to Morrison and started renting the suite we saw today, at Orwell Place."

Merriman tightened his hand around the steering wheel, and a knuckle popped.

"So, she'd be twenty-nine or so when she first moved in there. By our guess, the Joker would have only been a child then, ten or eleven at the most." Suddenly, Merriman's face went white. "Jesus, you don't think she babysat him, do you?"

Gordon laughed, a sound somewhere between a barking chortle and a wheeze. He shook his head.

"That's why we want to ask her some questions, son, when she's ready to answer them. But if her file suggests anything, it's that's she's a woman concerned with words. Currently she's working as an editor for an online journal, and before his death she held down an executive position in her father's private publishing company. Us asking her questions is like a reader directing the author's focus in a story, and she's going to want to have all the narrative details in place. If anything, the week we've given her will be more so that she can figure things out for herself."

The young constable mulled this over as he drove the last few minutes before reaching the station. Just as he parked the cruiser, Gordon let out an abrupt curse.

"Commissioner?" Merriman asked. Gordon raised one hand and flapped it in dismissal, searching frantically through his pockets with the other one. He found his cell phone and rapidly punched in a series of numbers. Merriman could hear it ringing, and was surprised when he heard a woman answer nervously.

"Ms. Morrison?" Gordon's voice was raised slightly, "I forgot to tell you something important."


	3. Reminiscences

**All that Remains**

**Author's Note: **Finally, things are starting to get interesting! At least, I hope they are. Once again, a huge thank you to everyone who has read or reviewed this story. There's no point in my posting it if nobody's going to read, and so I really appreciate your time. As always, if you have anything constructively critical to say of the piece, I'd be happy to hear what you have to say.

Obligatory Disclaimer: If you recognize it from DC, the Nolanverse, or anywhere else... than it ain't mine.

* * *

**Chapter 3: Reminiscences**

Anne slowly put the phone back into its cradle and brought up her other hand, pinching the bridge of her nose. Her eyebrows knit together, the lids beneath them closing over her eyes for a drawn-out sigh. Within her skull, she could hear the steady pound of her own heartbeat. It wasn't even one o'clock yet, but her day was already beginning to feel like an exercise in endurance.

Commissioner Gordon had been right to call her, she decided. It had been an unwelcome intrusion – especially so soon after their initial encounter – but a necessary one all the same. She regretted the curtness in her voice when she had responded to him.

"And just _who_ exactly, do you think I'd be selling the clothes too, sir?"

It shouldn't have surprised her that there would actually be people willing to purchase something so macabre; the internet seemed to thrive off people like that.

Ironically, it was only after his incarceration in Arkham Asylum that the Joker became an even greater figure of influence on the people of Gotham. Something about men who desperately believe their own delusions of revolutionary agency, men not only willing to die for their cause, but to kill for it. Leave them to run amok and everyone calls them monstrous. But put that same monster in a cage, and suddenly people listen, the mad whispers become legitimate. Idealistic college students and political cynics, frustrated white-collar slaves to bureaucracy and conspiracy theorists alike all seemed to latch on to one thing or another that the villain had said, and once planted, the seed grew.

Like it or not, the man had left his own brand of scar tissue on the face of Gotham, and as time passed, it was beginning to resemble a hideous smile of success.

Anarchy always seems like an appealing alternative until it actually happens. Anne had seen the bastardized version of what the Joker had planned for the city, and the very thought of it made her scowl in derision. "Chaos", indeed. Young men and women donning clown masks to hide their identity while committing low-scale crimes, vandalizing corporate businesses even as they wore mass-produced t-shirts emblazoned with the Joker's jagged grin. _Shuffle the Deck!_ they cried, fists raised in the air as though it were the most original act of defiance they had ever shown.

Anne wondered how many of them knew the effort required to shuffle a deck to perfect randomness. Upsetting the order of things was going to take a lot more than slogans and social-media sensations – she couldn't help but think that if he could see it, the Joker would be disgusted at this misinterpretation of his vision.

And here she was, being told by the Commissioner of the GCPD himself to not sell the mass-murderer's clothes, because only God knew what would happen after that.

"People know he's dead, Ms. Morrison. There was no hiding that, and the response has already been more than we expected. For that very reason we've wanted to keep things fairly quiet beyond that simple fact. If anyone knew you were in possession of his things, well..." a hush fell over their connection as Gordon weighed his words. "No doubt the attention would be more than unwanted."

Anne licked her lips nervously before replying. She told herself she shouldn't care, that she didn't want to know, but she _had _to.

"Commissioner," she asked, her voice cracking, "how did you bury him?"

On the other end of the line, Gordon winced. He had hoped that details like this might serve as incentive for Ms. Morrison to keep her promised rendezvous with him in a week. It was also confidential information, but at this point, Gordon felt the woman deserved a little trust.

"We, ah, we didn't. A very thorough autopsy was performed in order to learn as much as we could from him. Samples of his brain tissue were sent to Arkham Asylum for research, and the rest of the remains were cremated. We couldn't run the risk of someone trying to steal his body, or parts of it."

She had hung up shortly after that, a dull throbbing already forming behind her eyes. It was still unclear to Anne what anybody thought she'd do with the clothes, including the man who'd willed them to her, but she certainly wouldn't be selling them.

Turning from her kitchen counter, she unceremoniously flung the shoes back into the box and closed the lid, one shirt-sleeve still dangling out the side. Without turning on the light she dumped the box on the small table beside her bed and pulled the enormous grey sweater over her head. Her pants dropped to the floor, followed by a pair of underwear, and for a moment Anne stood naked in the dark. She ran her fingers through her hair, letting her knuckles tangle briefly in the knotted curls before completing their journey to the base of her shoulders. From there, callused hands traveled downward, sparking goose-bumps on the skin ahead. When her fingers finally found the floor, she held the position, feeling the protest in her stiff muscles.

When the burn in the back of her thighs became sufficiently unbearable, she stood up, rolling back her shoulders and hearing them click. As she strode into the bathroom, flicking the lights on, she caught her reflection in the mirror. _God_, she mused, _when did I get this old? _

She turned the taps for her cramped bathtub, letting the steam slowly soften the wrinkles in her reflection until imperfections and positive qualities alike were nothing more than a blur. Carefully, she sank beneath the hot water and submerged her face, her knees pulled together and sticking up like a pair of fleshy mountains.

Sound was amplified beneath her bathwater, and Anne closed her eyes to heighten the sensation. The small bubbles of air rising from out of her nostrils, the lapping of the water against the porcelain tub, the creaking of her body and the pipes below, her own heartbeat... in that moment she was truly aware, yet simultaneously oblivious.

She had been like this when she met him.

* * *

At first, Anne hadn't realized. She had been too immersed in the water as well as her own thoughts. It had taken a bolt of lightning crashing down, the peal of thunder ricocheting off the walls of the tub, to bring her lurching forth into reality. Before she could readjust, still blinking streams of water from her eyes, there came a knock on her door.

A part of her wondered, albeit briefly, if it was Henry.

That thought was quickly banished by the more pressing matter – someone wanted into her apartment, and she hadn't let anyone into the complex. Was it one of her neighbours, or the landlord perhaps? Anne thought about the thunder that had so harshly resurrected her from her luxuriant bath. Maybe they were expected to lose power what with the lightning, and the landlord was coming by to give warning, and maybe a few candles. It wouldn't be the first time something like that had happened in Orwell Place.

With this in mind, Anne rose from the tub, rivulets of foam and water running down her body. She wrapped a housecoat around her shivering frame and pulled her sodden curls back with an elastic. Leaving damp footprints in her wake, she hurried to the door, not bothering to peer through the peephole to see if her assumption was correct.

"Mr. Drummond, is everyth – " her words were cut short by the sight before her.

It wasn't the landlord at all. It was a boy, head downcast and dripping wet from the rain. His hands were chapped, several knuckles looking raw and scraped, as though he'd brushed them too close against a brick wall. Anne's eyes quickly searched him, from the muddied bottoms of his canvas shoes to the rip in the shoulder of his black t-shirt. He didn't have a coat.

Common sense of a uniquely Gothamite kind told her to shut the door and lock it. Strangers were dangerous, especially in the Narrows. She was a woman alone in her apartment, the risk was too great. Her city's crime-rate was almost six hundred percent above the national average, and that didn't even include the psychological aberrations that seemed to occupy many of the criminals' brains.

Anne knew all of this. Knew that it was foolishness to open her door for a stranger, let alone one who was clearly a runaway.

But all she saw in her doorway was a boy, wet and shivering, without anywhere to go. Besides, with his thin, gangly frame and soft chin, she realized he hadn't quite yet hit the point in puberty where boys gained all their muscle. If it came down to a fight, she could overpower him. Maybe.

He looked up at her from beneath an unkempt fringe of poorly-dyed green hair. "Pl-please," he stuttered, "can I come inside?"

Gaping, Anne took an instinctive step backwards. The boy saw this and took a step forward. Before she really knew what was going on, he had taken a few more. A pair of thin arms wrapped around her waist, and he began to sob.

Anne let her apartment door swing closed of its own accord before she hesitantly rubbed the boy's shoulders and whispered, "Hey, hey now. It's going to be alright."

She'd never been more wrong in her whole life.

* * *

With a gasp, Anne arched her back and jerked forward, bringing her face up from the bathwater. One hand gripped the side of the tub, knuckles white. Her chest heaved, deep and steady, making up for the oxygen she had been depriving it for the past minute. It had been a long time since she had let her mind wander back to that day.

Her other hand scraped against the bottom of the tub, crawling towards the drain and yanking on the stubborn rubber stopper. The water gurgled and belched, slowly beginning to spiral down. Anne watched it pointedly for a moment, then stood, careful to hoist herself with the support of the tub's side.

It was guilt that kept her from thinking about that day – guilt that in that moment, she'd had the power to save thousands of lives, had she only known.

It would have been so easy, too, with him nestled against her frame, distraught and distracted. She could have grabbed him by the hair and bashed his head against her kitchen counter – over and over and _over! _– and that would have been the end of it. The Joker would have been nothing more than a bloodied boy, motionless on her floor. Anne had come to the conclusion long ago that some murders simply didn't count as crimes.

But, as her conscience often wailed, she hadn't known!

The boy standing in her kitchen, arms wrapped around her, didn't have a name at that point. Didn't have any scars. None that she could see, at least. The green hair, much of a symbol as it had become, bore no significance that day.

Anne dried herself off, quickly mussing her hair with the thick cotton towel. She combed through the mottled brown and grey strands, smoothing the dampened curls, and then braided them together. Her eyes stung against the harsh bathroom lights, and the wavering glow that had begun to penetrated her vision told her that a migraine was fast approaching. The damn things had plagued her ever since menopause started.

Running cold water from the sink, Anne bent and angled her head to collect a pool of it in her cheek. She straightened, opened the medicine cabinet behind her mirror, and dumped two Tylenol into her open palm. Knocking those back with a single swallow, she wiped her mouth against the back of her hand and hurriedly shut off the lights in the bathroom and the rest of her apartment. It fell surprisingly dark, despite it only being the middle of the day.

Already starting to feel sick to her stomach, Anne crawled into her bed, naked beneath the covers, and willed herself to go to sleep.

* * *

An awkward moment passed between them, the boy drawing deep and ragged breaths as his sobs subsided. Anne remained unsure of how to comfort him further. Having had no siblings and no children or close nieces and nephews, she wasn't exactly used to dealing with children. On the contrary, they actually made her feel uncomfortable. And this boy, though he was nearing that transition into manhood, was no different.

Finally, he let go of her. When he turned his head, Anne realized his cheeks weren't just flushed from crying and the cold. He was embarrassed.

"Hey now," she spoke slowly, struggling for words even as they formed on her lips, "you want to tell me your name?"

The boy blinked away a drop of water, the action seeming twitchy and unnatural.

"I'm... I'm nobody."

"Oh, come now. Let's try that again. My name's Anne. What's yours?" The back of Anne's neck had started to prickle, but she was determined to ignore it. She told herself that if the kid was a runaway, there were all kinds of reasons for him to not want her to know his name.

The boy clenched and unclenched his hands as they hung by his sides, possibly because he was starting to regain feeling in them. When he spoke next, his tongue seemed thick in his mouth, and his voice had fallen into a deeper tone.

"My name is... Joe."

He paused after saying it, the weight of the unspoken last name heavy in the air. But then he swallowed and licked his lips, and Anne left it at that.

"Do you need to use the phone, Joe?"

The boy shook his head. In a way, she wasn't surprised. He had come here, to her apartment, in the godforsaken _Narrows_ of all places. Clearly the kid didn't have anywhere else to go.

He brought his hand up to his mouth and began to gnaw on a fingernail nervously. Again, Anne noticed how battered his knuckles looked, the skin cracked and torn in places. She motioned for him to hold out his hands, and hesitantly, he obliged. Anne's long, slender fingers encircled his own and she was surprised by how rough his hands really were. His palms were raw too, as though he'd been hauling firewood without any gloves recently.

She let out a sigh through her nose and looked at the boy's face, but not quite in his eyes. She was still holding his hands. ''We should bandage these." Joe immediately stiffened and pulled his hands back.

"I'll be fine."

Anne shrugged, the plush material of her housecoat pressing against her shoulders, and for the first time she realized just how underdressed she was. Two small clouds of heat rose to her cheeks.

"Suit yourself," she told him, trying to keep her tone neutral.

The boy flinched when she addressed him, as though he had been expecting her to yell or admonish him physically. His eyes were wide and flitted from place to place, struggling to focus on any one thing. Beneath his black t-shirt, his chest rose and fell in sharp, rapid bursts. It took Anne little time to realize he was hyperventilating.

"Joe?" she asked, her voice rising in concern, "Are you alright?"

He looked at her squarely then, and it sent chills down her spine. She'd never peered into eyes so dark before.

Then they rolled, straight into the back of the boy's head. Still staring white, he collapsed to her floor.


	4. Observations

**All that Remains**

**Author's Note: **I hope this chapter appeals to everyone, there's quite a bit of character-development and detail that I wanted to squeak in before the action & intrigue begin to pick up. Let me know what you think. It's been really nice, hearing back from readers and seeing that people are actually taking an interest in this fic. Can't tell you all how much I appreciate it.

As always, I do not own any characters already belonging to DC or the Nolanverse.

* * *

**Chapter Four: Observations**

A part of Anne – a very small one, granted – still felt guilty about not catching him.

He had been so close, too, hardly an arm's length away, and still she had let him slump to the floor. It happened so unexpectedly, yet as he fell, Anne felt as though she were watching him from underwater. First his eyes rolled back, then his jaw seemed to relax, and the gentle droop of his bottom lip was mimicked all throughout his body until finally his knees buckled and the weight of his torso carried him downwards. He had nearly clipped the back of his head against the leg of her kitchen table, and that was what finally broke Anne from her immobility.

A muffled gasp, much delayed, struggled past her lips. She scrambled forward, reaching underneath the boy's head with one hand and using the other to find a pulse. _There._ It existed, but was much slower than she imagined it would be. He had just been hyperventilating, after all.

Satisfied that she was not handling a corpse, Anne clumsily slipped her hands beneath the boy's arms and dragged him across the floor. His head lolled back and forth as she moved him, and at such close proximity, Anne could smell the faint, greasy stench of kerosene. Dimly, she wondered if it had anything to do with his scraped hands. Perhaps he'd been trying to start a fire in one of those cylindrical metal bins favored by the homeless in their area.

She propped him up against the couch for a moment, disappearing into her bedroom only to return with a fleece blanket and a pillow, which she immediately threw onto the couch. Then she bent her knees and attempted to lift the boy up. It didn't work. Not the way she had hoped it would, anyway. Instead of a single, strong movement, Anne resorted to lifting the boy's upper half first, then swinging his legs up onto the couch, feet dangling over the side. He was much heavier than she had assumed he would be, even in this deadened state.

Breathing hotly through her nose, Anne draped the blanket over Joe's body and bunched the excess to keep him turned on his side slightly. She had heard of people being violently sick after fainting, so she tilted his unresisting head to the side, facing away from the couch. If he was going to puke, it might as well be on her floor, rather than the upholstery.

Anne smoothed back her hair and eased herself into a sitting position on the floor. Her small coffee-table was between them, and she figured it was enough distance to keep her from being sprayed with vomit if something did happen. From her vantage point, she took the opportunity to examine the boy.

He had a pleasantly shaped face, but there was a gauntness to him that highlighted his cheekbones a little too sharply, and his eyes seemed sunken against the blue-veined skin of their sockets. There was a faint shadow along his jaw line, the darkened pores of impending facial hair, and a streak of something that Anne couldn't quite identify. It spread from his chin and diagonally across his neck, almost as though he had stroked a dirty hand down to his chest.

It took Anne a minute to realize that the streak was only partially grime. Much of it was actually bruising. Something – or somebody– had hit Joe in the throat. And recently.

Narrowing her eyes, Anne continued to scrutinize her unexpected guest.

Beneath that awful, faded shade of green she could see the odd strand of golden-brown hair peeking through. It was a poor dye-job, and she found herself wondering if he had done it using Kool-Aid.

The worn soles of his shoes hung over the edge of her couch, and if Anne craned her neck, she could read the size, still imprinted in the scuffed rubber. Size 11. At his current height, roughly five and a half feet, his shoes seemed quite oversized, almost like clown shoes. Anne doubted Joe would stay at this size for much longer, though.

Between the soon-to-be stubble on his chin, the low bass of his voice when he spoke, and the size of his shoes, Anne reckoned Joe was just on the cusp of his final transformation into a man. Given how underfed he looked, the process has no doubt been delayed.

Anne's eyes strayed back to the bruise on the boy's neck, and she shuddered.

He must be fourteen, possibly as old as sixteen if his growth had been severely impacted. Still young enough to endure a beating, but almost old enough to start exchanging serious blows himself. Once he finally reached his full height, Anne suspected he'd tower over her own frame – just barely grazing 5' 9" – and then whoever was hurting him would be in real trouble. He might be lanky, but the boy was going to be a solid-chested man, based on the width of his shoulders. An immoveable object, if he set his mind to it.

Swallowing, Anne felt grateful that he wasn't any older. Though she highly doubted he presented any threat to her, it was always a possibility, especially in the Narrows. And while her landlord was a nice, responsible man who did his best to keep his residence filled with equally nice and responsible people, Orwell Place was no stranger to domestic dispute and the apathy of neighbours. Since Henry had left, Anne was frequently plagued with imagined scenarios where she would have to defend herself. She had taken a few self-defense courses specifically for women a while back, and there was a can of mace in her purse. At his current size, Anne reckoned she at least had a chance of getting the upper hand if a fight were necessary. But if he got much bigger...

She stood. In the depths of her gut she knew that she should call the police, or social services, or _somebody_ about the strange, bruised boy currently passed out on her couch. Besides, she certainly wasn't capable of addressing any of the issues that he must have – childless at thirty-four, she was clueless when it came to kids, even though Joe wouldn't be one for much longer. The whole situation was absurd, more than a little frightening, and yet somehow Anne didn't want anyone else involved. There was too much she didn't know.

For starters, she didn't know for certain that the bruise on Joe's neck had been an intentional injury, though she did consider it highly unlikely to have been an accident. And, assuming it had been intentional, was it really any of her business? Perhaps the boy had done something awful and deserved it. Maybe it had been a scuffle amongst friends that went too far. Fight clubs were not an uncommon thing in Gotham's rougher corners, nor was getting roughed up a bit by one of Falcone's men for having a disagreeable look. The boy's green hair would have drawn more than curious stares here in the Narrows; it wasn't a good place to be someone who stood out.

There were a myriad ways for Joe to have acquired that bruise, and if she got the police involved, or even just the hospital, there would be questions. Her experience with the boy thus far was a fairly good indicator that he wasn't interested in answering them.

Anne carefully stepped around the couch and opened a shallow drawer beneath her kitchen counter. When she returned to her position in front of the coffee-table, there was a worn deck of cards in her hand. She riffled through the deck, picking out the two jokers and setting them to the side. The clowns leered up at her, and despite the grotesque exaggeration of their smiles, Anne couldn't help but feel slightly sorry for these old friends of her. The two least popular cards in the deck, they still had most of their finish left, while the others were faded with wear and smudged from years of fingerprints. It seemed cruel, somehow, to insist that every deck be equipped with a joker when the card was so rarely used. At least with this deck they had each other to keep company.

* * *

The bed sheets rustled as she moved, stretching her legs and relishing in having found a cool spot for her feet. With heavy eyelids, Anne rolled over and threw back the covers weakly. It was blindingly dark in her room, a great relief after the stinging brightness of her migraine aura. But, the nap and the anti-inflammatory seemed to have done their job – her head no longer pounded violently and her stomach had ceased to roil in discomfort.

Blearily, Anne threw out her arm and patted around with her hand until at last her fingers brushed against fabric. Her fingers encircled the sleeve and drew it towards her. Still shrouded in shadow, Anne fumbled with the buttons for a few minutes before finally slipping into the shirt and refastening it. The hell with wearing a bra, she was the only one in the house and so flat-chested it probably wouldn't have made much of a difference anyway.

The shirt was certainly big enough to hide her breasts within. Anne tried to remember when she had bought something quite so oversized.

As she continued to feel around for a pair of pants, Anne realized that she was searching on the wrong side of her bed. Sighing at her own foolishness, she rolled over again and reached down, locating her pants from earlier with ease.

When she reached down for her socks, her fingers instead became ensnarled within her obscene knitted sweater. That was what she had been wearing earlier. So where had this shirt come from?

Gaping though it was, Anne suddenly felt as though the collar of the shirt had been buttoned to the very top and was choking her. Her nostrils were flooded with the smell of gunpowder and musk.

She'd pulled on his shirt – she was wearing the _Joker's _goddamn shirt – and she hadn't even known.

Anne felt like she was a child again, frozen stiff in fear but frantically begging her father to extract the wasp that had once gotten caught in her hair. "Daddy! _Get it off! Get it off Getitoff!_"

Filled with the same sense of urgency, Anne began fumbling furiously with the buttons, but her fingers were useless and stupid, and so she resorted to trying to wriggle out of it by lifting it over her head. She got stuck, almost ripping every seam as she panicked, fearing she might never get out of it. Still struggling, Anne leapt from the bed and turned on her bedroom lights with her elbow. Bathed in light, much of the panic dissipated, and Anne could focus more clearly on undoing the buttons.

Her chest was heaving up and down when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, four buttons still left fastened in place.

With the sleeves dripping off her wrists and the startled expression on her face, it looked vaguely as though she were halfway dressed in a patterned straight jacket. The startling imagery was enough to halt Anne's wild wrenching against the fabric, and for a moment, she stood still and simply looked.

The fabric was a diluted iris blue, almost feminine without the overpowering purple coat and chartreuse vest to offset the mottled hue of the hexagon pattern. Though she was no clothing connoisseur, Anne knew a well-tailored shirt when she saw one – being _in_ one made the craftsmanship all the more obvious. And, much as it repulsed her to admit, the fabric felt good against her skin.

Unbidden, a smirk slowly spread across her reflection's face.

Anne shook her head and contorted her mouth into a scowl of derision, unbuttoning the shirt and tossing it violently across the room. It collided with the box containing the rest of her ungodly inheritance and knocked it to the floor. She winced at the clatter of it, but refused to look. Instead she returned her gaze to her reflection, instinctively wrapping her arms around her bare chest.

"It's just a shirt," she told herself, "just a stupid shirt."

_Oh, but it's, ah, not _just _a shirt, now is it, Annie girl? You're a smart one, with all that post-secondary education crammed into that handsome head of yours, you _know _there's more to it than just that..._

Feeling her resolve falter, Anne lowered her gaze from her reflection and directed it at her arms crossed over her chest. A flush of frustrated shame reddened her cheeks and she bit her lip. How could she have been so childish?

It was just like she had learned, so many years ago, in a course about the principles of literary theory. Words and language were inherently meaningless – an arbitrary collection of visual symbols with corresponding sounds that had, for whatever reason, been assigned a particular connotation. These connotations could change, were constantly changing in fact, and the only reason for any of it was because people chose to assign meaning to otherwise meaningless words.

Meaning was ultimately where a word could derive any sense of power from.

By projecting her terror onto his shirt, Anne had just bestowed upon that particular article a very great deal of power. In that moment she had let it manifest her fear, it no longer simply represented the Joker, it _became_ him. For those few frantic seconds, she hadn't been wearing a tailored shirt, she'd been wearing his skin.

Still refusing to acknowledge her reflection, Anne stooped and picked up her grey sweater from the floor. She wrestled it over her head and roughly snaked her arms through the bulging corridors of sleeves, relishing in the familiar itch of yarn against her flesh. Sighing through her nose, she turned sharply on her heel and stalked out of the bedroom, not bothering to turn out the light.

"It's still just a shirt!" she called over her shoulder, voice still stinging with a hint of embarrassment.

* * *

With a crackle, Commissioner Gordon freed his last Nicorette tablet from its punch-foil prison and popped it into his mouth. It still tasted awful to him, just as they all had when he first started to quit smoking, but he had stubbornly refused to purchase the mint-flavored kind, once they hit the market.

"It's not supposed to be easy," he had told his wife when she chastised him for making things difficult for himself, "this way I can say that I earned it, in the end."

And he had.

It had been years and years since Gordon had lit up a cigarette, and even the rare stirrings of a craving were usually quelled by willpower alone. It had been three months since his last one, and as he rolled the gradually softening ball of gum in his mouth, he realized how old the last package must have been.

He thought he'd chew on the gum as a wry substitute for a celebratory cigar that evening. Now, he wasn't so sure it had been a good idea.

Alone in his office – away from the persistently ringing telephones, the photocopied mug-shots, the haggard men and women who looked to him for direction in this shithole city – he thought he might finally take a moment for himself to breathe a sigh of relief.

It was hard for Gordon to admit just how difficult the past year had been on him. Frankly, his whole career with the Gotham City Police Department had been harrowing, but these last twelve months had been exceptional. It hadn't been Jonathan Crane and his attempt to poison the city with fear, nor the Joker with his savage obsession, nor Bane and his almost-Armageddon that burdened Gordon the most. It wasn't even those things combined.

It was how his city, his people, responded after all of that.

Fear, desperation, depravity – all of those Gordon could understand. Even he had succumbed to those, at one point or another. It was human nature to do so, and most came to regret every moment lived in such a way afterwards. Batman had struggled with this, so fiercely loyal to his own sense of ideals. Compromise was never an option for him, responsibility for oneself was everything, even if that meant making the ultimate of sacrifices.

Gordon was grateful that the dark knight of the city managed to uphold such stringent personal values; they were what him the Batman, after all. But he had to acknowledge that not everyone was capable of such fundamental strength, and it had nothing to do with weakness of character.

Batman had the liberty of a mask, something the average citizen of Gotham simply didn't have. There was a certain protection afforded by being insignificant, but that was a far cry from anonymity. Besides, good people have also always been predictable. Weak spots are rarely presented on their own bodies, but raise a hand towards someone they love or know... It was a lesson Gordon knew all too well.

But it was nonetheless something he could accept. Such moments of betrayal were part of the human condition, most weaknesses hail back to the same things that make people so wonderful, the inevitable emotional qualities that can neither be controlled nor defined.

For many years, Gordon's conviction of this had been rewarded.

The past twelve months, unfortunately, had been quite different. The fragile citizens of Gotham hadn't just begun to crack, they were shattering themselves into irreparable shards, razor-sharp and remorseless. Overdosing on cynicism and conspiracies, they flung themselves into a frenzy of directionless mayhem, pointing fingers and adopting half-formed ideals that manifested as slogans without meaning.

It was like watching a cat with urine crystals, the poor animal scraping itself along the ground in a hysteric attempt to squeeze out a few pained droplets of piss, while the pressure on its bladder continued to build.

Whatever it was that the people were looking for, if they even knew, it sure as hell hadn't come yet.

Defeated, Gordon spat the bitter gum into the waste basket beside his desk, wiping a small string of saliva from his lips with the back of his hand.

They had tried finding it, however, and in the strangest of places too. The Joker's trial had to be the worst of it, though. It was bad enough that the man could cry for clemency on account of his "apparent criminal insanity", as one journalist had put it, but that he had somehow convinced several jurors of his innocence was even worse. The trial endured four different juries before a decision was finally made. One hung jury Gordon could understand – a little blackmail here, a little bribery there – it wouldn't have been difficult for the Joker to pull off, even under maximum security in the bowels of Arkham Asylum.

But _three_ hung juries though, and a fourth that almost ended that way; that wasn't something the Joker could orchestrate. And at that point, he didn't need to. People legitimately believed he was innocent, or at least that he wasn't responsible enough to deserve the death sentence.

It was the first time a lethal injection had been used on a Gotham prisoner since the late fifties. The only reason it had even been an option was that public outcry was so intense the Joker's sentence had actually been put to a public vote. Gordon had been simultaneously appalled and relieved when he found out. He had no idea how such a thing had been possible, but then again, justice in Gotham bore little resemblance to justice anywhere else, particularly after they had to overrule the Dent Act.

It was appalling because it went against almost everything he believed concerning fair trials, but it had also filled him with hope. The Joker frequently held the citizens accountable for his existence – "_Don't you see? You people let things get so bad, so crr-ay-zee, that guys like me and the Bat became possible._" – maybe this would be their chance to take responsibility for his demise.

The vote had been simple. In the event that the Joker was found guilty of his many charges (terrorism, aggravated assault, assault with a weapon, kidnapping, unlawful confinement, murder in the first and second degree, manslaughter, speeding...) the public could choose whether his ultimate sentence would be life in prison, or death.

They weren't deciding whether he was guilty or not, that was the jury's job, but merely what to do with him if he was convicted.

As it was, the judge presiding over the trial had committed suicide shortly after the Joker's execution. He had insisted on staying with it through to the end, but by the time the Joker was handed his sentence, Judge Lewis Walters felt the law had been so blatantly disregarded that there wasn't much point in going on anymore. That's what his note had said, anyway. Gordon believed it.

Nevertheless, it had come as a great relief to the Commissioner to know that finally, _finally_, the clown would be dealt with, and that it hadn't cost Gotham's dark knight his sanity in the process.

With the autopsy finished, the ashes unceremoniously disposed of, and the madman's last request honoured, it was finally starting to feel over for Gordon. Anne Morrison had been the last stop on a very long road, and after she answered his questions in a week, then maybe it really would be the end.

There were the rioters, of course, the ones who somehow took it upon themselves to hold the Joker up as a political symbol. Much as they disheartened him, Gordon knew they'd be much easier to deal with than their monstrous inspiration. The real clown at midnight had been laid at last to a mirthless rest.

Gordon passed a wearied hand over his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose where his glasses pinched. So far it hadn't been much of a celebration for him. He opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out one of several manila folders, this one almost spilling out its papery contents it was so full. Every crime the Joker had ever committed lay within that folder, described in alarming detail during his therapy sessions with that young doctor at Arkham. She had once told Gordon the reason her patient was so forthcoming was that he failed to believe he had done anything wrong. According to societal values, he knew that he was behaving criminally, but that was a far cry from genuinely feeling that way about it.

Scanning through the folder, Gordon took a deep breath. So many deaths, finally accounted for. It was a grotesque ritual, but the Commissioner took comfort in it. If he didn't devote himself to the living and the dead, then he'd be haunted by ghosts of guilt. It was important to remember everyone who had been lost because of the clown.

A grainy photograph slipped from its paperclip mooring and fluttered to the floor. With a groan, Gordon stretched down to get it, his chair creaking in protest. It was an old mug-shot, one of the first they took of the Joker. Gordon glanced at it dismissively, then something caught his eye. He looked again.

Glasgow grin, painted face, greasy green ringlets... everything was as it should be. That was problem.

Chewing his lower lip, he riffled through the folder, haphazardly spreading its contents over the surface of his desk. After a minute of thorough searching, he found what he was after: several other photographs, and a handwritten note.

In every photograph where he was allowed to wear civilian clothes, the Joker had been wearing a tie. It wasn't a terribly attractive thing, a mustard yellow and green colour combination that faintly resembled a checkered pattern from Escher. A press photo, the last taken of him alive, showed him wearing the familiar vest and shirt and pants, but no tie. It was a small detail, but one that had rooted itself in Gordon's mind.

It wasn't mentioned in the handwritten will, either.

_To be delivered to Ms. Anne Morrison of #502, Orwell Place upon my death: all personal articles of clothing up to and including..._

They'd followed that last, odd request down to his socks. So where had the tie gone?

Gordon bundled the loose papers and photographs and deftly placed them back in the manila folder. "Damn you, Joker," he whispered into his dark office, "Damn you to hell."


End file.
